Notes

A Right Brain Approach to Focus Groups
1. We will be in the mental health profession, not the marketing business.
Focus groups are just like marriage counseling. You want to sell, consumers are interested, but poor communication and lack of understanding can stop a procurement dead in their tracks much the same way they are able to undermine relationships. The idea is to tear down barriers and identify shared values and mutually supportive behaviors.
As in therapy, respondents arrived at focus groups being heard, not only for your financial incentive. Life is tough and many people have few outlets to vent. Maybe they've just originate from work where bosses, customers and co-workers are making unreasonable (since they perceive them) demands all day long. Perhaps they've nagging partners or uncontrollable kids at home. Not to mention the daily bombardment of one-way communications, the commercial messages they are able to't help but see everywhere they appear.
Focus groups are their time. Discussion guides need to be well planned, but you can find immense advantages of "letting go" every now and then. Allowing respondents to babble from time to time presents an unparalleled possiblity to experience meaningful human moments. Understanding who your respondents really are as well as your brand's role inside their lives is where qualitative really shines.
Consumer thought processes are certainly not linear, and great focus groups don't always need to get either.
2. It's a journey, not only a destination.
Just as no one gets "fixed" in therapy, a minimum of not for a while, it is unrealistic and counterproductive you may anticipate to get "the answer" in focus groups.
"Validation," or "the winning concept" just isn't that which you are after here. We be employed in a risky business, still more art than science. And without conflict and ambiguity, there would be no art.
One can scan the Cliff Notes for "The Brothers Karamazov," but true appreciation is only able to result from diving in and wrestling using the great issues in the human condition represented within this long book.
In art, as in life, sharply contrasting beliefs may be incredibly important and equally valid. In both cases, the answers, in and of themselves, are shallow with no insights and understanding that support them.
It's the wrestling, right onto your pathway, the struggle that matters.
Focus groups include the marketing equal of this procedure. A great intellectual and inventive adventure where spontaneity and unexpected twists make everything even more rewarding and the insights that emerge much more valuable.
The renowned David Ogilvy quote on research can't be cited way too many times.
"I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to work with judgment; they may be arriving at rely an excessive amount of on research, and they also use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination."
Ideas and solutions don't come from focus groups or any research. They result from individuals who have thought and felt deeply.
When approached simply because this "journey" or intellectual struggle, the main focus group process offers incredibly rich food for thought, becoming the muse for smart, creative marketers to wrestle with and develop their ideas.
3. Be Honest
Qualitative scientific studies are time for creativity and open-mindedness. It isn't about forcing our opinions (or ads, logos and cool product concepts) on the throats of our own target consumers. It is about accepting responsibility and not assigning blame.
How often have we heard the advertising agency art director, observing inside the back room, say, "Those respondents are actually stupid. They don't get the work."
It isn't about us as marketers. It's about them as consumers. What we think is irrelevant within the long term, as well as the more defensive were, the greater we try to rationalize past decisions, the deeper we dig ourselves into a hole.
Given internal corporate politics along with a hostile financial state that breeds job insecurity, it is sometimes complicated for individuals being honest collectively and ourselves. If something isn't working, we should instead adjust our approach.
As Albert Einstein once said, "If we knew exactly what it was i was doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
In the end, honesty - and humility - pays off handsomely.
4. If it feels good you could be to something.
When the great Louis Armstrong had been inspired to define jazz, he replied, "If you need to ask, you might never know."
Like a mesmerizing Armstrong improvisation or Ella's scat singing, great marketing arises from the soul. True, we are commercial marketers first, not artists, but to reduce the influence of art and emotion and only an overly analytic approach may be a fatal mistake.
Bonds between brands as well as their consumers are just like how any art form connects featuring its audience. Legendary brands are set up with vision and inspiration, never with research.
But qualitative research, and focus groups particularly, present a distinctive chance to feel our way through works beginning even as we are in as soon as with target consumers and our professional colleagues.
5. Nothing is much more important than great stimulus.
Focus groups are just like the existing saw about computers. Garbage in, garbage out. Consumers often know what that like and what they want, but can't always articulate their feelings. We need to provide them with the tools, or even the vocabulary, to speak about these complex emotions.
Therefore, whenever exploring a new product concept, positioning, communications alternatives or just about any innovation, it can be essential to present many single-minded positioning concepts. Putting "stakes inside ground" provides an excellent starting place for meaningful, articulate discussion with respondents.
6. Put respondents to function and take them out in the "Critic's Chair."
Getting see this page involved in exercises straight away, even something as simple as a brand sort, helps buy them going. The goal is usually to get respondents talking, preferably together, rather than answering "yes" or "no" questions resulting from the moderator.
This direct involvement grows exponentially in importance when exploring concepts.
A common complaint about focus groups is the place where easily they seem metamorph consumers into know-it-all marketing critics. This should be not surprising. Handing out concepts for respondents to mark up or reading concepts one at a time for group feedback can be an invitation to support forth for the dos and don'ts of promoting.
This pitfall exists it doesn't matter how skilled the moderator, how well the guide is crafted or how fabulous the stimulus might be. Respondents may be instructed at length to state feelings, not judgments, to focus on the big picture instead of the minutia, but by some time the other or third concept comes up for discussion, most have become judge and jury, confidently predicting that "people will (or won't) like this one."
Consider instead a workshop approach, where a band of eight could be put into "teams" of four. They are given a packet of concepts, between maybe five or ten or more, after which arrested for choosing a few most motivating concepts and bringing them to life.
We can ask the crooks to name products, design packages, write commercials, select a spokesperson that best personifies the product or service, or any other number of things.
A lot of good stuff happen using this approach. Most importantly, when respondents are deeply engaged using this type of challenge (that they can apparently relish), they become passionate participants having a stake in the process, not aloof critics.
As they talk to one another and think out loud, first as they feel their way through the concepts and after that bring them their favorites your, we are able to view the consumer thought process up close and personal. The ultimate output from the creative exercise isn't important, and expectations mustn't be full of that regard. But the example of this psychological and artistic journey is invaluable.
This approach also removes the temptation to "keep score." If we test ten concepts, 2 of them show remarkable promise though the other eight are laughed out of the room, performs this connote failure? Or if ten of ten are received positively, is the fact that an unqualified success?
Absolutely not. Depth of understanding and direction will be the recommendations for great focus groups, not an unquantifiable scorecard.
7. Adapt Proactively
Unlike quantitative research, focus groups are a live, ongoing experience that can work for a day, every week or more. This provides the possibility to evolve, to absorb, consider, and adapt. The discussion guide and stimuli need to be reexamined after on a daily basis of research. Inaction and static thinking are the enemies. "Keeping everything exactly the same therefore we can compare apples and apples" doesn't hold water. Best to push your opinions, aggressively. You can always keep your "old" concepts in your back pocket to the next niche for a reality check or perhaps the apples to apples comparison, being ready with new things that reflects learning to date will maximize the value of the research.
8. Embrace the shared experience to construct consensus.
Focus groups are a highly social, shared experience. This isn't merely a metaphorical journey, but a true one. Together, we have fun in airports drinking coffee desperately seeking Internet connections, fly from city to city, stuff ourselves with unhealthy food within the back rooms of research facilities and still have drinks at the hotel bar when it's throughout every night.
The stated purpose with the journey is always to connect to consumers, nevertheless the opportunity to talk with our colleagues is essential.
Selling an idea internally is usually a great deal more difficult than selling it to end consumers. Corporate politics and conflicting interests are already recognized to kill great ideas ahead of when they are given a fair chance being developed.
Focus groups enable us to observe consumers first hand, absorb their feedback, and talk through key issues, allowing our thinking to evolve collectively. Ideally, key members with the brand team and outside agencies take part in this experience, implicitly granting them "insider status" and enlisting them as champions of a marketing idea or direction.
Building the bonds of the united front make it easier to push worthwhile ideas with the system.
Conclusion
It is probably the most vocal critics of focus groups may well not truly grasp the power of meeting consumers face-to-face, and therefore are likely uncomfortable with whatever isn't a "fact." The process demands of people involved the requirement to wrestle with a lot of ambiguities. But we're stronger with this intellectual and artistic struggle inside the long run, as deeper understanding will bring about more incisive quantitative questionnaires and far superior marketing executions.
Contrary to the prevailing belief of countless marketing research professionals, quantitative research is just not the finish all. To quote Albert Einstein again:
"Not everything that could be counted counts, and never exactly what counts could be counted."
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